Small disclaimer, I’m going to be talking about how to get players to understand the hooks and clues you give for adventures. But just because players don't act on information doesn't mean they don't understand it. You can feed them clues all day long, but if they aren’t interested you can’t force them to engage. Getting players more likely to engage in the prepared adventure is an entirely different subject. One I will write about in the future.
Players are exceedingly dumb and dense when it comes to picking up on clues or comprehending quest hooks in TTRPGs. It's a universal fact for every table I have run for or played at, and I’m including myself in this. But, for the most part, this isn't their fault.
Yes, players are dumb, but they are CONTEXT dumb. Compared to the Game Master, they are children wandering and playing in a world they do not fully comprehend. Yes, they're very intelligent and find very creative solutions to the problems they find, or put, themselves in. But they don't have the context, the wisdom, of living in the world. Or more specifically, your perspective and vision when you were prepping the adventure.
It’s the same as when a party is struggling endlessly with a puzzle and you start screaming internally as they jump to "wild" conclusions. It's simple for you, sitting with the knowledge of how it's supposed to be solved. You, as the Game Master, have all the answers. With puzzles, we can give hints and clues as to what the answer is. So surely we should just be giving more hints so our players eventually connect the dots with our hooks, right?
Not in the slightest! The whole goal of a puzzle is to piece together the solution. The point of a hook or clue in an adventure is to propel the game forward to the next set piece or leg of the journey. Their adventure isn't going to be self-contained like a puzzle either. It'll have other information floating around to cause confusion. Trying to figure out the context of a vague hint or discover where you need to go to pull on a hook isn't the point (Usually, but I'll get to that), the adventure is.
A subtle clue like "the big bad is poisoning the town's drink" might just as easily drive your players to the river rather than the brewery you intended. So what is the solution to this? It's really simple actually, just…
Get Rid of Subtlety
Don't obfuscate information the players need to progress forward. If they are receiving information, make it clear what it is. Step out of the game and tell the players directly what they've learned if needed. We Game Masters have a tendency to speak like wizened sages reading prophecy on a mountaintop. But 9.9 times out of 10 it'll fly right over their heads. It's not worth having the game grind to a halt for the sake of flair.
So when the drunk fisherman tells the party he's positive "someone has been poisoning the town's drink", take a second to lean out of character and clarify the fisherman is referring to ale and not just all drinks. It might sound like repetition, but it just takes one player not getting the implication to pull the party astray.
Don't Gatekeep with Dice
If it is needed to move the adventure forward, do not lock it behind random chance. Now you can lock extra benefits behind rolls or extra effort your players need to put in. Like perhaps, the drunk fisherman is upset at the players for sinking his boat. So he isn't so willing to tell them he knows it's a deadly poison because the town drunks are dying en masse. Or maybe he doesn't tell them how to filter the poison with bagged charcoal, something a sneaky peek into his mug would discover.
Not knowing any of that won't stop the party from moving the adventure forward. But it could certainly help them if they discovered it. Reward the extra effort but always impart the information.
Give Character Context
The player characters have lived all their lives in the game world. They hold an understanding of it equal to that of us Game Masters. However, we sometimes forget this understanding isn't so easily shared between the player and the character. Players need to be informed when their characters have an extra understanding they do not.
Going back to the drunk fisherman and poisoning example. A player character who worked in a local tavern would know all ale here is wax sealed in their barrels to make sure it's not tampered with. Another player character, who perhaps has been brewing their own ale, would know it would have to be a powerful poison to stay potent while fermenting in the barrel. Providing context like this to a specific character also helps the players connect with the information, making it a little more personal and memorable.
Clarify Their Assumptions
If you hear the players begin operating off incorrect assumptions, correct them. If they believe the fisherman implied the poisoning was only happening in one specific tavern, or that drunks weren’t the ones who were dying, or etc, step in and clear up the confusion. Don't let them make faulty plans just because they misheard you. Eventually, the party will realize they have been wasting time on bad info, feeling dejected and angry afterward.
Step in and remind them what they know, but make sure not to tip your hand and give them unearned information. Remind them the fisherman didn't specify a single tavern for example. This helps the players make an informed decision and might even prompt them to ask more questions or look for additional answers. But giving unprompted extra information stinks of railroading and takes agency from your players. So stick to only what they know.
Layer Your Clues (Advanced Advice)
Sometimes you'll find your adventure actually DOES revolve around subtlety. Where the whole point is your party trying to put together the clues like a big puzzle. It's the bread and butter of mysteries, political thrillers, who-done-its, etc. So if you're running an adventure like that, you'll need a different way to subvert your subtlety. You do this by adding more clues. Many more clues.
For every single piece of information you want to seed, toss out 6 or 7 different clues pointing to the same thing. Sprinkle them everywhere with the expectation your players are only going to latch onto a few. If the clues are all pointed at the same piece of information then there will be very few plausible answers for your players to choose from. Reducing the possibility they misinterpret things without you having to be blatant about it.
Let’s look at our town poisoning for example. The party knows the town drunks are dying off to poison, what they don’t know yet is that the poison is from one specific brewery. We want to give the players this piece of information but not bluntly. So we can seed the clues;
The upscale tavern that doesn’t sell the popular ale in town hasn’t had problems with poisonings
A town ordinance only permits taverns to sell local alcohol from the three breweries
It is common practice for taverns to open and pour kegs at the bar itself to show off which brewery they got the ale from
There is a popular ale in town everyone drinks produced from only one of the breweries
The ale kegs are wax sealed by the breweries
An anti-drinking council member has endorsed one of the three brewery in town
The brewery that produces the popular ale recently has closed to the public for a “remodel”
Any one of these isn’t enough to point the party in the right direction, but get 2 or 3 and there is a pretty solid direction it is pointing. Layering clues like this is a useful technique for more than giving a single piece of information. But be warned it is a fine line between laying out clues like this and railroading the party. This topic deserves its own article, but as a general rule you should only use layering if you are confident about giving these smaller clues quickly and seamlessly while also not continually reiterating them. This kind of runs counter to a lot of the points in this article, which is why I am labeling it as advanced advice.
If you stick to the core advice however, get rid of subtly, don’t gatekeep with dice, give character context, and clarify player’s assumptions, you are well on your way to running seamless adventures. Which should be everyone’s goal at the end of the day.
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